Lusty lesbian sex scenes, self-mutilation and cartilage-snapping pirouettes
were just some of the dizzying pleasures on display in the Venice Film
Festival’s bravura opening night movie, Black Swan. The film,
which plays like a psychotic version of classic ballet drama The Red Shoes,
is Young Turk Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to his Oscar-winning The
Wrestler (it also won the Golden Lion here in Venice in 2008) and is, in
fact, as the director admitted in the subsequent press conference, something
of a companion piece to that film. For here, yet again, we follow the
debilitating life of a professional athlete,